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BALDWIN'S BIOGRAPHICAL BOOKLETS 



THE STORY 



OF 



John Greenleaf Whittier 



FOR YOUNG READERS 



BY 



SHERWIN CODY 




WERNER SCHOOL BOOK COMPANY 
NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON 



Baliwln's Biograiitiical Booilet Series. 

Biographical Stories of Great Americans 
for Young Americans 

EDITED BY 

James Baldwin, Ph.D. 

IN these biographical stories the lives of great Americans are 
presented in such a manner as to hold the attention uf the 
younjrest reader. In lives lil<e these the child finds ihe most 
inspiring examples of good citizenship and true patriotism. 

NOW RcADY 

Four Great Americans price 

The Story of George Washington .... lOc 

The Story of Benjamin Franklin .... lOc 

The Story of Daniel Webster lOc 

The Story of Abraham Lincoln ..... 10c 
"■ By James Baldwin 

Four American Patriots 

The Story of Patrick Henry lOc 

The Story of Alexander Hamilton .... 10c 

The Story of Andrew Jackson 10c 

The Story of Ulysses S. Grant .... 10c 

By Mrs. Alma Hola\an Burton 

The Story of Henry Clay ...... 10c 

By Frances Cravens 

Four American Naval Heroes 

The Story of Paul Jones 10c 

The Stciry of Oliver H. Perry 10c 

The Story of Admiral Farragut 10c 

The i^tory of Admiral Dewey 10c 

By Mrs. Mabel Borton Beebe 

Four American Poets 

The Story of William Cullen Bryant .... 10c 

The Story of Henry W. Longfellow . . . 10c 

The Story of John Greenleaf Whittier . . . 10c 

The Story of Edgar Allan Poe ..... lOc 

By Sherwin Cody 

OTHER volumes IN PREPARATION 



3Plg8RJEOCIVEn, 




ht, 189S1, by Werner School Book Company 



APR 22 1899 




jrijp ILakcsitif ^rrss 

R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY 
CHICAGO 



Our^.\c\a< 



.-v^ 



/x 



CONTENTS 



PACK 



CHAPTER 

I. Thp: Quaker of thk Olden Time ... 5 

II. A Farmer's Boy i° 

III. Whittier's Family ..... i6 

IV. Stories OF THE Poet's Childhood . . 20 
V. Scho(,)l Days 23 

VI. Haverhill Academy .... 29 

VII. The Friendship of Good Women . . -33 

VIII. Political Ambition 3^ 

IX. The Great Question of Slavery . • 43 

X. How Whittier was jNIobbed ... 47 

XI. Some of Whittier's Famous Poems . . 54 

XII. The End of a Successful Life . . 59 




JOHN GREEN LEAF WHITTIER. 



WHITTIER 



CHAPTER I 

THE QUAKER OF THE OLDEN TIME 

The Quaker of the olden time! 

How calm and firm and true, 
Unspotted by its wrong- and crime, 

He walk'''4 the dark earth through! 

The Quaker, with his broad-brimmed hat, his 
queer, old-fashioned coat, and his habit of saying 
"thee must" and "thee must not, " was not only 
an honest man, but a good-natured, sensible 
man as well. The poet Whittier was a good 
Quaker, as ' 'calm and firm and true" as the 
Quaker in his poem. He was also fond of children, 
and his best poems are about children and child- 
hood days. 

It is only a little over two hundred years since 
the first Quakers appeared. Whittier's great-great- 



grandfather, Thomas Whittier, was said to be a 
Huguenot by descent. He came from England, 
however, as a Puritan, and held various offices in 
the Puritan church in Salisbury and Haverhill, in 
northeastern Massachusetts, where he settled. 

It happened that two Quakers, Joseph Peasley 
and Thomas Macy, who had come to Haverhill, 
were arrested and fined for "exhorting" on the 
Lord's -day. They did it in their own houses; but 
in those Puritan times, all the exhorting had to 
be done in church by regular ministers. Thomas 
Whittier thought these men had been treated rather 
unjustly, and he and others petitioned the legis- 
lature, or General Court, to pardon them. But the 
old Puritans thought these petitioners about as bad 
as the "heretics" themselves, as the Quakers were 
regarded, and notified them that they must take 
back their petition or be punished. Thomas Whit- 
tier and Christopher Hussey, though not Quakers, 
refused, and were deprived of their right to vote, 
or, as it was called, "their rights as freemen." 

Thomas Whittier was such a good, sensible man, 
however, that trie people, although he was sus- 



pended from voting, had to ask him to help them do 
various things in the church; and after a while the 
General Court restored his "rights as a freeman." 
He himself never became a Quaker, but his son 
married a daughter of Joseph Peasley, and so most 
of the Whittiers after that were Quakers. Yet 
there were some who were not; for history tells of 
a Colonel Whittier about the time of the Revolu- 
tion. He could not have been a Quaker, for no 
good Quaker ever goes into the army. 

The Quakers are a peculiar people. They do 
not believe in fighting or going to war on any 
account. They are always for peace. The poet 
Whittier was opposed to war, and often wrote 
against it; and he refused to favor the Civil War, 
which freed the slaves, although he had himself 
been for many years a great anti-slavery reformer, 
along with his friend William Lloyd Garrison. But 
he admits that he had a sort of diabolical liking for 
the army and war, and once he wrote a war poem 
and had it published anonymously. He thought 
no one would ever know who wrote it, for it didn't 
sound much like a Quaker; but when he had 



become an old man some one did find it out, and 
he had to admit that he was its author. 

Another thing the Quakers wiU not do is to swear, 
either in a profane way, or before a court of justice. 
They declare that the Scriptures say, "Swear not 
at all," and that it is just as wrong to swear in 
court as in anger. They are not great talkers; and 
in meeting, if no one has anything to say that is 
worth saying, they think it much better to sit in 
silence for an hour than to listen to a dull sermon. 

Your grammars will tell you that it is just as 
incorrect to say "thee is," or "thee must," as it is 
to say "me is," or "him ought." It seems strange 
that most of the Quakers in the world, from the 
earliest time, should make a grammatical blunder 
like this. Of course Whittier, and many others, 
knew it was not correct; but they said that Quakers 
had used this form of speech from the very first, 
and they would not try to change the custom. 

These queer people also said the}^ were plain, 
sensible folk, and therefore would not cater to the 
' 'world and the devil" by wearing fine clothes. All 
dressed in the same way, in what was called 



Quaker drab, the men with broad-brimmed beaver 
hats, the women with plain bonnets of black or 
"dove-colored" silk, unadorned with ribbons or 
other ornaments. 

Neither did they have any music, nor indulge 
themselves in any unnecessary luxuries. They 
were sharp and shrewd, however, and as we 
shall see in the case of Whittier, did not forbear to 
have a little fun now and then. 

The Puritans had revolted from the Church of 
England, and came to America for religious free- 
dom. The Quakers had likewise revolted from 
the established forms of worship, but their belief 
was very different from that of the Puritans. 

At first the Puritans in Massachusetts thought 
they would keep the Quakers out of their colony. 
They therefore punished severely every one who 
dared to come among them. They condemned 
four of them to death, and others they whipped and 
imprisoned and banished. But these persecutions 
did not prevent the Quakers from coming to Massa- 
chusetts, and finally the Puritans became ashamed 
of their intolerance, and left them to themselves. 



lO 



CHAPTER II 

A farmer's boy 

The first Thomas Whittier, after he married, 
built a log house, not far from the present Whittier 
homestead; but when he grew old and became 
well-to-do he put up what was then a fine house. 
This was as long ago as 1688, or thereabouts. 

In this house, which is still standing, the poet 
John Greenleaf Whittier was born, December 17, 
1807. His father was nearly fifty at the time of 
his birth, and twenty-one years older than his 
mother. His grandfather was about the same 
age when his father was born, and his great- 
grandfather and great-great-grandfather were 
equally old at the births of their sons. 

On his mother's side W^hittier was descended 
from a remarkable old preacher named Stephen 
Bachiler. This man had deep-set, bright eyes, 
and handsome features, which were inherited by 
most of his descendants, many of whom became 
famous men. One was Daniel Webster, who 



II 



looked very much indeed like Whitticr. Both had 
the I3achiler eye and brow. 

New England farm life; is not easy or pleasant, 
thou-h Whittier never admitted that he didn't 
have a first-rate tin-ie when he was a boy, as you 
may see by reading "Snow-Bound." His father's 
family had to raise most of the food they ate. 
They had no comfortable sofas, and the chairs 
were ver\- straight-backed. Besides, they did not 
succ(;ed very well in keeping warm in the winter. 
As they thought it was nec(>ssary to toughen them- 
selves, they went out on very cold days without 
much clothing on. Indeed, they probal)ly had 
but very few warm clothes. There were no such 
things in those days as heavy flannels or great 
overcoats. The cloth in their garments was spun 
and woven at home by the mother, and she did 
not always get the threads very close together. 
So there were a great many spaces for the wind 
to blow through. Of course they had to go to 
meeting every First-day (Sunday), and as there 
were no fires in the meeting-house, they suffered 
much from the cold in winter. 



12 

Even the dwelling houses were not very warm. 
There was only one fire, and it was built in a 
chimney-place so large that there was room for 
benches inside the chimney next to the hre. Then 
the wind would come in through the cracks and 
crevices; and while it was very hot before the fire- 
place, a little way back it was cold. It would often 
happen on cold, windy nights that their faces 
would burn while their backs were almost freezing. 
And the bedrooms were like ice-chests, and never 
warm except in summer, when they were sure to be 
too hot. Whittier was sickly all the latter part of 
his life; and he laid his trouble largely to exposure 
in childhood; for he was always delicate. He lived 
to be very old, however, as did all his ancestors. 

This was the unpleasant side to his boyhood; of 
the pleasant side Whittier himself has told us. If 
you wish to know what good times he had in the 
summer season, read the "Barefoot Boy": 

Blessings on thee, little man, 
Barefoot boy with cheeks of tan! . , . 
From my heart I giv^e thee joy — 
I was once a barefoot boy! 



13 

It is only the country bo\' who knows — 

How the tortoise bears his shell, 
How the woodchnck digs his cell, 
And the g-round-molc sinks his well; 
How the robin feeds her young, 
How the oriole's nest is hung; 
Where the whitest lilies blow, 
Where the freshest berries grow. 
Where the groundnut trails its vine, 
Where the wood-grape's clusters shine. 

But it is in "Snow-Bound," his ^<;Tt';it(\st and most 
beautiful poem, that w(^ hear of all the pleasant 
times which the farm boy has in winter, and also all 
al)Out the meml)ers of Whittier's own family. He 
beo-ins the poem by tellin.i;- how the snowstorm 
came up, and then <j,oes on — 

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, — 
Brought in the wood from out of doors, 
Littered the stalls, and from the mows 
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows. 

Every farmer boy knows what "chores" are. 
The fun came the next morning; when their father, 



H 

"a prompt, decisive man, " wasting no breath, said, 
"Boys, a path!" Yon must go to the poem itself 
to read about the Aladdin's cave they dug in the 
snow, and the other things they did. "As night 
drew on," says the poet, 

We piled with care our nii^htly stack 
Of wood ag"ainst the chimney back, — 
The oaken log, green, huge and thick, 
And on its top the stout back stick ; 
The knotty forestick laid apart. 
And filled between with curious art 
The ragged brush; then, hovering near, 
We watched the first red blaze appear, 
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 
On whitewashed wall and sagging beain, 
Until the old, rude-furnished room, 
Burst flower-like into rosy bloom. . . . 
Shut in from all the world without. 
We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 
Content to let the north wind roar 
In baffled rage at pane and door; 
While the red logs before us beat 
The frost line back with tropic heat; 
And ever, when a louder blast 
Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 



15 

The merrier up its roaring- draught 
The great throat of tlic cliimncy laughed. 
The house dog on his paws outspread 
Laid to the fire his drowsy head, 
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall 
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall ; 
And, for the winter fireside meet, 
Between the andirons' straddling feet, 
The mug of cider simmered slow. 
The apples sputtered in a row, 
And, close at hand, the basket stood 
With nuts from brown October's wood. 

Whitticr was nearly sixty years old when he 
wrote this poem, and perha]")s he had forgotten 
partly the hardshij')s of his l)oyhood; but the 'poem 
is so great because it is so simple and natural and 
true. It may seem strange that the greatest work 
of a great poet is no more than a description of his 
every-day home when he was a boy. Whittier's 
home was not finer nor better than anybody else's 
home — than yours or mine; in fact, in comparison 
with what we have, it was very poor indeed. Yet 
Whittier made this wonderful poem about it. That 
shows how great a poet he was. Only a great 



i6 

poet could take a barefoot boy, or a snowstorm, or 
a common farmhouse and write such beautiful 
verses about it. Think of this carefully, and you 
will come to understand what good poetry really is. 



CHAPTER III 



W H I TT I E R S 1'^ A M I L Y 

Most people are blessed with brothers and sisters, 
with whom they grow up. First one and then the 
other is sent away to school. Soon they are all out 
in the world, earning livings for themselves; they 
get married and have families of their own; and 
before long they seem to forget the home of their 
childhood. But Whittier did not get married, and 
one of his sisters did not marry. He lived on the 
farm most of the time till he was thirty years 
old, when he moved with his mother and sister to 
Amesbury. We are therefore more than usually 
interested in knowing about the members of the 
family in which he was born. 

First, there was his father. He was a plain, 



17 

matter-of-fact man, and did not believe in poetry; 
and so, in this, young Greenleaf received very little 
encouragement from him. 

The encouragement in his poetic efforts, which 
the father failed to give, he got from his mother, 
sisters, and brother, who were all proud of him. 
His mother w^as a dear, sweet Quaker lady, as 
saintly as she was lovely. Her face was full and 
fair, and she had fine, dark eyes. She apprc^ciated 
poetry and all fine and delicate sentiments, and 
for fifty years she was th(^ guide, counselor, and 
friend of her illustrious son. 

Greenleaf had a brother, Matthew Franklin, 
several years younger than himself, who outlived 
every one else in the family except the poet. He 
had also two sisters, the eldest of the family, and 
the youngest. The elder sister, Mary, married 
and lived in Haverhill ; but the younger never mar- 
ried, and was the poet's intimate friend and house- 
keeper until both were old. In "Snow-Bound" 
the reader will find this beautiful description of 
her, lines as sweet and beautiful as the poet ever 
wrote : 



i8 

Upon the motley-braided mat 
Our youngest and our dearest sat, 
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes. 
Now bathed within the fadeless green 

And holy peace of Paradise 

I tread the pleasant paths we trod, 
I see the violet-sprinkled sod 
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak 
The hillside flowers she loved to seek. 
Yet following me where'er I went 
With dark eyes full of love's content. 

And yet, dear heart! remembering thee, 

Am I not richer than of old? 
Safe in thy immortality, 

What change can reach the wealth I hold? 

What chance can mar the pearl and gold 
Thy love hath left in trust with me ? — 
And when the sunset gates unbar, 

vShall I not see thee waiting stand, 
And, white against the evening star, 

The welcome of thy beckoning hand? 

The poem ' ' Snow-Bound " was written perhaps 
as a memorial of her. He and she had been for 
fifty years as loving and fond as husband and 



19 

wife, but held together by a purer, more spiritual 
bond. 

She was a poet like her brother; and to this 
day, in any complete edition of Whittier's poems 
you will find, towards the end of the volume, 
"Poems by Elizabeth H. Whittier, " which he 
wished to be always printed with his. 

In this family there were two other kindly souls. 
One was Uncle Moses, a brother of the poet's 
father, "innocent of books, but rich in lore of 
fields and brooks. " The other was Aunt Mercy, 
Mrs. Whittier's sister: — 

The sweetest woman ever Fate 
Perverse denied a household mate, 
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less 
Found peace in love's unselfishness, 
And welcome wheresoe'er she went. 

Such was the Whittier family, all good Quakers, 
dressing in Quaker fashion, and talking in the 
quaint Quaker way; but they were all cheerful and 
ready for enjoyment, and all were fond and de- 
voted and gentle and ambitious to live well. 



20 



CHAPTER IV 

STORIES OF THE I'OET's CHILDHOOD 

The Whittiers seem to have been a simple- 
minded family. Some stories told of the poet in 
his childhood would almost make you think him 
stupid, but no one seems ever to interpret them in 
that way. 

He remembered nothing that happened before 
he was six years old; but about that time he heard 
that a neighboring farm had been sold at auction. 
The next morning he went out and was surprised 
to find the land still there, instead of a big hole in 
the ground; for he seemed to think that after the 
farm was sold it would be taken away. 

When he was nine years old. President Monroe 
visited Haverhill, and happened to be there on the 
same day that a menagerie came to town. The 
Quaker boy was not allowed to see either. He 
thought he did not care much for the wild beasts, 
but he would have liked to see the greatest man in 
the United States. The next day he trudged over 



21 

to the village, hoping to see at least some foot- 
prints that the great man had left behind him. 
He found at last the impressions of an elephant's 
feet in the road, and supposing these to be the 
tracks of the President, he followed them as far 
as he could make them out. Then he went home 
satisfied that he had seen the footsteps of the 
greatest man in the country. 

At another time he and his brother calculated 
that if each could lift the other by his boot straps, 
first one lifting and then the other, they might lift 
themselves u}) to the ceiling, and no telling how 
much higher. Of course when they tried it they 
didn't get ver}' far. 

In later life he used to tell a story of how 
children sometimes suffer needlessly, and in ways of 
which their parents little dream. When he went to 
ride with his father, they used to walk up a certain 
hill, in order to rest the horse. By the side of the 
road there was a gander, which had come out irom 
a neighboring farmyard; and he says he would 
rather in later life have walked up to a hostile can- 
non than as a child go by that gander. But he 



22 

was ashamed to let his father know his fear, and 
so walked past in an agony of dread. 

There is also told an interesting story of an ox 
named Old Butler. One day Greenleaf went out 
with some salt for the oxen. He was climbing up 
the side of a steep hill when Old Butler, on top, 
saw him, and came plunging down. The hill was 
so steep that the ox could not stop, and in a 
moment he would have crushed the young master; 
but gathering himself together at the right 
moment, the creature by a great effort leaped 
straight out into the air over the head of the boy. 
It was the wonderful intelligence of this ox that 
saved young Greenleaf's life. 

Another amusing story is also told of this ox. 
Once a Quaker meeting was being held in the 
kitchen. Unexpectedly the ox stuck his head in 
at the window. While a sweet- voiced sister was 
speaking he listened quietly; but when a loud- 
voiced brother began to speak, he drew out his 
head, flung up his tail, and went off" bellowing. 
This the children thought very funny and a good 
joke on the brother. 



23 



CHAPTER V 

SCHOOL DAYS 

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, 

The master of the district school 

Held at the fire his favored place. 

Its warm glow lit a laughing- face, 

Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared 

The uncertain prophecy of beard. 

He teased the mitten-blinded cat, 

Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat. 

Sang songs, and told us what befalls 

In classic Dartmouth's college halls. 

A careless boy that night he seemed; 
Rut at his desk he had the look 

And air of one who wisely schemed, 
And hostage from the future took 
In trained thought and lore of book. 

Large-brained, clear-eyed — of such as he 

vShall Freedom's young apostles be. 

— Snozv-Boiind. 

Until he was nineteen Whittier went only to the 



24 

district school, and he used to say that in all that 
time only two of the teachers were worth anything 
at all. Both of these were Dartmouth students, 
and are fairly well described in the above quotation 
from "Snow-Bound." One was Joshua Coffin, 
Whittier's first teacher. He came back again 
some years later, and often spent his evenings at 
the Whittier homestead. In later years he was 
the poet's friend and helper in the antislavery 
cause. 

Little Greenleaf started to school when he was 

very small, and before he had learned his letters. 

> Among his poems is a sweet little one, entitled 

"In School Days." He begins by describing the 

schoolhouse : 

Within, the master's desk is seen, 

Deep scarred by raps official ; 
The warping floor, the battered seats, 

Tlie jack-knife's carved initial. 

You must read for yourself the story of the little 
boy and the little girl, and how the latter said: 



25 

" I 'm sorry that I spelt the word: 
I hate to go above you, 
Because," — the brown eyes lower fell,- 
" Because, you see, I love you!" 



Of books to read they had not many in the 
Whittier household, and most of them were the 
works of saintly Quakers. The Bible was the 
chief book, and that they read until they had it by 
heart. Joshua Coffin used to bring various books 
which he had and read them aloud to the older 
people, not paying much attention to the boy of 
fifteen who sat in the corner and listened. Once 
he brought a volume of Burns's poems and read 
page after page, explaining the Scotch dialect. 
Greenleaf, then a tall, shy lad, listened spellbound. 
He had got into what his Uncle Moses called his 
"stood." The teacher saw that he was interested, 
and offered to leave the book with him. That was 
about the first good poetry he had ever heard. It 
kindled the fire of poetic genius in his own mind 
and heart, and he soon began to write poetry him- 
self. But he was only a farmer's lad, and writing 



26 

poetry does not come easy to one in such sur- 
roundings. 

While he was in his teens he made his first visit 
to Boston, staying with a relative who was post- 
master of the city. You may imagine how he 
looked, a gawky country boy, with broad-brimmed 
Quaker hat and plain, homespun clothes. But he 
wore for the first time in his life ' ' boughten but- 
tons" on his coat, and his Quaker hat had been 
covered by his Aunt Mercy with drab velvet. 
These made him feel very fine. 

He was induced to buy a copy of Shakespeare; 
and at the table of his relative was a brilliant lady, 
who was very kind to him. He had been warned 
against the temptations of the town, and you can 
imagine how shocked he was to find out that this 
fine lady was an actress. She invited him to go to 
the theater; but he hastily declined, and was 
almost ashamed of himself for having bought a 
volume of plays, even if they were Shakespeare's. 

Somehow or other a copy of one of the Waverley 
novels came into the Quaker home, and Whittier 
and his sister read it together without letting their 



27 

parents know. They read late into the night; and 
atone time, just as they were getting to an exciting 
part, the candle burned out and they had to go to 
bed in the dark, for it was quite impossible to get 
another. 

There is a story that Whittier's first verses were 
written on the beam of his mother's loom. At any 
rate he wrote verses on his slate in school, and 
passed them around among the scholars. One 
stanza his sister remembered, and repeated after- 
ward : 

And must I always swing the flail, 
And help to fill the milking-pail? 
I wish to go away to school ; 
I do not wish to be a fooL 

The desk on which the poet wrote his first verses 
was built by that original Thomas Whittier, more 
than a hundred years before Greenleaf was born. 
It stood in the kitchen for many years; then it was 
packed away. But a few years before Whittier 
died, a niece of his had it taken out and repaired, 
and he used it until the end of his life. 



28 

In those old days his sister Mary thought his 
verses exceedingly fine, quite as good as those she 
read in the "Poet's Corner" of the Free Press. 
This paper had just been started in Newburyport 
by William Lloyd Garrison, who was only three 
years older than Whittier, but had had every 
advantage of education. John Whittier, the 
father, liked the solid tone of it, and subscribed. 
Without letting her brother know, Mary got one 
of his poems and sent it anonymously to the editor 
of the paper. When, a week or so afterward, the 
postman came along by the field where the Whit- 
tiers were at work and fiung the paper over the 
fence, Greenleaf looked at once to see what was in 
the ' ' Poet's Corner, " and was immensely surprised 
to see his own poem there. He says he simply 
stood and stared at it, without reading a word. 
His father suggested that he had better go to 
work; but he couldn't help opening the paper again 
and looking at his own poem. 

Another poem was sent, and Garrison wrote a 
note to introduce it, in which he said: " His poetry 
bears the stamp of true poetic genius, which, if 



29 

carefully cultivated, will rank him among the bards 
of his country." How strange a prophecy, and 
how strange the fortune that brought together the 
great reformer, William Lloyd Garrison, and the 
great poet, John Greenleaf Whittier, when both 
were so young and inexperienced! 



CHAPTER VI 



HAVERHILL ACADEMY 

It was a happ}^ day for Whittier when his sister 
sent that stolen poem to the paper edited by 
William Lloyd Garrison, for Garrison immediately 
took a fancy to the author. After printing the 
second poem sent, he learned from what part of 
Haverhill the poems came, and drove out fourteen 
miles to see the young author. 

He was a neatly dressed, handsome, and affable 
young gentleman, and came with a lady friend. 
As it was a hot summer da}-, Whittier was at work 
in the fields, wearing doubtless little beside an old 
straw hat, a shirt, and a pair of overalls. His bash- 



30 

fulness made him wish to avoid secin*:^ the fine city 
visitor; but his sister persuaded him. He shpped 
in at the back door and changed his clothes, and a 
long and interesting visit with Garrison followed. 
They became fast friends, and in later years were 
workers together in the cause of the slave. 

Friend Whittier, the old gentleman, came into 
the room while the two were having their first 
talk, and Garrison told him he ought to send his 
son away to school. The old gentleman was not 
at all pleased by the turn afi^airs were taking, and 
told young Garrison that he ought not to put such 
notions into the boy's head. As we have already 
said, Friend Whittier, bemg a matter-of-fact 
Quaker, did not approve of poetry anyway. 

So this time passed by, and Greenleaf was kept 
at work on the farm. Garrison gave up his paper 
in Newburyport and went to Boston, and the young 
poet sent his verses to the Haverhill Gazette. A 
Mr. Thayer was the editor of this paper, and he 
conceived the same opinion of the lad that Garrison 
had. He also went to the old gentleman and urged 
him to give his son a classical education. An acad- 



31 

emy was to be opened in Haverhill that fall, and 
young Whittier could attend it and spend part of 
each week at home. Two years before, Greenleaf 
had seriously injured himself by undertaking some 
very hard work on the farm ; indeed from this strain 
he suffered all his life. On account of this, his 
father considered the matter more favorably. 

Mr. Thayer, the editor, promised to board the 
young man in his family; but it was a serious ques- 
tion as to where the small amount of money needed 
was to come from. There was a mortgage of |6oo 
on the farm, and nearly all the ready money that 
could be obtained went to pay taxes and interest 
on the debt. The young man received permission 
to attend the academy; but he must pay his own 
way. 

It was not an easy thing to pick up spare change 
in those days, as the elder Whittier well knew; but 
Greenleaf looked cheerfully about. An opportunity 
soon appeared. A hired man on his father's farm 
occupied his winters in making a kind of cheap 
slippers, which he sold for twenty-five cents a pair. 
He promised to teach the young poet the art of 



32 

making them. It was not hard to learn. During 
the winter of 1826-27 ^^^ made enough to keep him 
at the academy six months. He calculated so 
closely that he thought he would have twenty-five 
cents more than enough to pay his expenses of 
board, books, and clothes. At the end of the term, 
sure enough, he had that twenty-five cents left. 

James F. Otis, a noted lawyer, read some of 
Whittier's poems, and, like Garrison, determined 
to go and find him. He was told that he was a 
shoemaker in Haverhill. He says that he found 
him at work in his shoe shop, and making himself 
known to him, they spent the day together in wan- 
dering over the hills, and on the shores of the Mer- 
rimac River, talking about matters literary. Like 
Garrison, Otis later became an intimate friend of 
Whittier. 

When the Haverhill academy was opened, Whit- 
tier was not only to become a i^upil; but he con- 
tributed the ode that was sung. This gave him a 
sort of social send-ofi^ in the town, and henceforth 
he was something of a personage in Haver- 
hill. In the )'ear 1827 he contributed forty-seven 



33 

poems to the Havcj-Jiill Gazette alone, and forty- 
nine in 1828. 

So the young poet that Wilham Lloyd Garrison 
discovered and went fourteen miles to see was 
beginning to become famous. 



CHAPTER VII 



THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOOD WOMEN 

If Whittier ever had a real love affair, no one 
seems to have known about it. The fact is, he 
was not of the passionate kind. But all his life 
his best friends were women, and many a good 
woman he knew and was fond of, and he and she 
became real friends. And of that friendship with 
him, all those women, without exception, were 
proud indeed. In a letter written a dozen years 
after his school life began, he says: 

' 'For myself. I owe much to the kind encourage- 
ment of female friends. A bashful, ignorant boy, 
I was favored by the kindness of a lady who saw, 
or thought she saw, beneath the clownish exterior 



34 

something which gave promise of intellect and 
worth. [This was the wife of Mr. Thayer, with 
whom he boarded. ] The powers of my own mind, 
the mysteries of my own spirit, were revealed to 
myself, only as they were called out b}' one of those 
dangerous relations called cousins, who, with all 
her boarding school glories upon her, condescended 
to smile upon my rustic simplicity. She was so 
learned in the, to me, more than occult mysteries 
of verbs and nouns, and philosophy, and 
botany, and mineralogy, and French, and all that, 
and then she had seen something of society, and 
could talk (an accomplishment at that time to 
which I could lay no claim), that on the whole I 
looked upon her as a being to obtain whose good 
opinion no effort could be too great." 

One of these young lady friends, perhaps the 
very cousin of whom he speaks, wrote of him years 
afterwards : 

"He was nearly nineteen when I first saw him. 
He was a very handsome, distinguished-looking 
young man. His eyes were remarkably beautiful. 
He was tall, slight, and very erect; a bashful 



35 

youth, but never awkward, my mother said, who 
was a better judge of such matters than I. . . . 

' 'With intimate friends he talked a great deal, 
and in a wonderfully interesting manner; usually 
earnest, and frequently playful. He had a great 
deal of wit. It was a family characteristic. . . . 
The influence of his Quaker bringing-up was mani- 
fest. I think it was always his endeavor 

to render less 
The sum of human wretchedness. 

This, I say, was his steadfast endeavor, in spite of 
his inborn love of teasing. He was very modest, 
never conceited, never egotistic. One could never 
flatter him. I never tried, but I have seen people 
attempt it, and it was a signal failure. He did 
not flatter, but told some very wholesome and 
unpalatable truths." 

An amusing story is told of Whittier's love of 
teasing. At the time it happened he must have 
been between thirty and forty. A Quaker sister 
named Sophronia Page, who went about preach- 
ing to little gatherings of the Friends, stopped 
one night at his mother's house. As most Quaker 



36 

bonnets are precisely alike, there is no way of tell- 
ing them apart except by the name inside. When 
Sophronia Page went away she put on Mrs. Whit- 
tier's bonnet by mistake. When she got to the 
next stopping place and saw the name inside, she 
sent the bonnet back. Whittier noticed it in a 
box in the hall, and thought he would have some 
fun with his mother. 

"What does thee think Sophronia Page has 
done?" he asked her, sitting down. 

"I don't know, Greenleaf, " she said quietly. 
"What is it?" 

"Something I'm much afraid she will be called 
up in Yearly Meeting for. " 

"I hope she hasn't been meddling with the 
troubles of the Friends," said Mrs. Whittier, 
anxiously, referring" to some church quarrels. 

"Worse than that!" said the young man, while 
his mother got more and more excited. "She has 
been taking other people's things, and has just 
begun to send some of them back. " 

With that he went into the hall and brought 
back the bonnet. 



37 

"If thee were twenty years younger I would take 
thee over my knee!" said his mother when she saw 
what it was ah about. 

Among his other famous women friends was Mrs. 
Sigourney, the poetess, with whom he became ac- 
cjuainted in Hartford while he was editing a paper 
there. He also knew Lucy Larcom ; and it was 
said at one time that he was engaged to marry 
Lucy Hooper, but there was no truth in this. Her 
death, shortly afterwards, made him feel very sad. 
In his poetic works you may find poems addressed 
to both these women. 

While speaking of women we must not omit a 
description of that woman who was to him dearest 
of all women in the world, his sister Lizzie. This 
gifted sister Lizzie was ' 'the pet and pride of the 
household, one of the rarest women, her brother's 
complement, possessing all the readiness of speech 
and facility of intercourse which he wanted; taking 
easily in his presence the lead in conversation, 
which the poet so gladly abandoned to her, while 
he sat rubbing his hands and laughing at her 
daring sallies. She was as unlike him in person as 



38 

in mind; for his dignified erectness, she had end- 
less motion and vivacity; for his regular and hand- 
some features, she had a long Jewish nose, so full 
of expression that it seemed to enhance, instead of 
injuring, the effect of the large and liquid eyes that 
glowed with merriment and sympathy behind it. 
. . . Her quick thoughts came like javelins; a saucy 
triumph gleamed in her great eyes; the head moved 
a little from side to side with the quiver of a weapon, 
and lo! you were transfixed." 

During his long life this sister was to Whittier 
more than sweetheart or wife, for she had the wit 
and the sympathy of all womankind in her one 
frail form; and Whittier knew it and depended on 
it for his happiness. 



CHAPTER Vni 

POLITICAL AMBITION 

Young Whittier remained at Haverhill academy 
only two terms. We have seen that he paid for 
the first one by making shoes. The second he paid 
for by teaching school. When he went to the 



39 

committee to be examined for this school he felt 
rather nervous; but the committee asked him only 
for a specimen of his handwriting, which was very 
neat and clear. 

He decided not to go to college, because he said 
he wouldn't live on the charities of others, and it 
would have been impossible to get through college 
without borrowing money of friends. Poor as he 
was, Whittier never borrowed money. 

While in Haverhill he wrote a great many poems 
and articles for the local newspaper. Garrison was 
then in Boston editing a temperance paper. But 
soon he thought he had something better in view, 
and concluded to turn the editorship over to Whit- 
tier. Whittier accepted the position and went to 
Boston; but he was to edit the Manufactiii'cr, not 
the PJiilaiitJiropist. Both were published by the 
same people. This is the way he writes about his 
work : 

' '•''X\\Q. JMaiiufacturcr goes down well, thanks to 
the gullibility of the public, and we are doing well, 
very well. Have had one or two rubs from other 
papers, but I have had some compliments which 



40 

were quite as much as my vanity could swallow. 
Have tolerable good society, Mrs. Hale and her 
literary club, etc. I am coming out for the tariff 
by and by — have done something at it already — 
but the astonisha' is yet to come! Shall blow 
Cambreling and McDuffie sky-high." 

Cambreling and McDuffie were politicians whom 
he was going to oppose. 

We should hardly think that the gentle poet 
Whittier, Quaker as he was, would conceive the 
ambition to become a politician; but he was editing 
a political newspaper, and soon got deep into poli- 
tics and liked it. 

He had not been in Boston long when, his father 
becoming ill, he went back to the farm and 
remained there until the old gentleman died, in 
June, 1830. He spent all his time in study and 
writing, however, and after his father's death he 
was asked to edit a political paper in Hartford, 
Connecticut. He didn't know anything 9^ 
Connecticut politics; but he took hold and 
learned how matters stood. Everybody liked 
and he made some excellent friends there. 



41 

Of course rival political newspapers are always 
saying sharp things about one another. After he 
had been in Hartford a few weeks he opened a copy 
of the Catskill Recorder and saw a long article 
headed "John G. Whittier, " in which he was 
abused and ridiculed unmercifully. He hid the 
paper so that no one should see it, and went around 
in fear and trembling, thinking every one would 
know about it. Finally he wrote to the editor of 
the paper, protesting; but the editor had another 
paragraph, saying that, if he was as "thin-skinned" 
as that, he had better keep out of politics. Soon 
after this the New York papers, among them 
Bryant's Evening Post, spoke of him and his editor- 
ship in a very complimentary manner, and he felt 
better. 

The fact is, Whittier was a good politician. He 
managed affairs in Haverhill for years, and had a 
sort of party of his own which controlled things. 
Once on election day a tipsy man asked for a ride 
with him into town, and said that if Whittier would 
give him the ride he would vote for his candidate. 
Usually the man had voted on the other side. 



42 

Whittier said, "All right, "and took him along. He 
supported the man to the polls, put the right ballot 
in his hand, and told him to vote. But the fellow 
was so intoxieated he was obstinate, and deter- 
mined to vote the other way. At the last moment 
somebody handed him the wrong ballot, and he 
put it in the box. 

There was in Haverhill district a politician who 
did not really belong to Whittier's party, but who 
had always been elected after giving written 
pledges. After he had been elected in this way for 
several terms, and had been forced by Whittier to 
live up to his promises, he determined to go in 
without pledges. Whittier was away, and so he 
wrote a noncommittal letter, referring to his past 
record, and saying he didn't intend to pledge him- 
self any further. But Whittier came back in the 
nick of time, saw the danger, and went over to see 
the man, whose name was Caleb Gushing. Whit- 
tier told him he would not be elected unless he 
signed the desired pledges. After a while he said 
he would sign an}'thing WHiittier wrote. So the 
young politician sat down and wrote a letter, which 



43 

Mr. Gushing copied and signed. It was printed as 
a circular and sent all around town, and Gushing 
was elected. Then after he was elected Whittier 
watched him closely, and saw that he made good 
the promises in that letter. Some time after, he 
was on the point of being made a cabinet officer by 
the party to which Whittier was opposed; but 
by the use of this letter Whittier prevented it. 



GHAPTER IX 



THE GREAT QUESTION OF SLAVERY 

It is altogether probable that Whittier would 
have been elected to Gongress, and have had per- 
haps a great political career, had it not been for 
an act of genuine sacrifice on his part, made ^or 
the sake of right and conscience. 

In 1833 Garrison pointed out to him that the 
country must be roused on the question of slavery. 
As a good Quaker, Whittier was already an aboli- 
tionist. He felt deeply the insufferable wrong 



44 

that American citizens, even though black, should 
be slaves under the whip of a master. In an early 
poem he cries passionately: 

What, ho! — oi:r countryman in chains! 

The whip on woman's shrinking- flesh! 
Our soil yet reddening with the stains 

Caught from her scourging" warm and fresh! 
What! mothers from their children riven! 

What! God's own image bought and sold! 
Americans t(j market driven, 

And bartered as the brute for gold! 

When Garrison's appeal came, Whittier was at 
home on the farm, having given up the editorship 
of the Hartford paper on account of illness. Caleb 
Gushing, seven years younger than he, had come 
home from Europe and through Whittier's influ- 
ence had been elected to Gongrcss. Whittier's 
own name was being mentioned. A life of political 
ambition seemed to lie open before him. But with 
Garrison's appeal, he began a thorough and careful 
investigation of the question of slavery and its 
abolition in the United States. At last he \vrote 



45 

a pamphlet entitled "Justice and Expediency." 
It was a brilliant defense of the antislavery posi- 
tion. This he had published at his own expense, 
poor as he was. When it was about ready to 
appear he hesitated, and considered the situation 
carefully. The al)olitionists were a poor, despised 
party. If he cast in his lot with them, none of the 
great political parties would have anything to do 
with him: he must give up his political ambition, 
and devote himself to a cause that would require 
years for its success, even if it should ever 
succeed. 

In after times a boy of fifteen, who was am- 
bitious in a political way, came to him for advice, 
Whittier said that as a young man his ideal had 
been the life of a prominent politician. From 
this he had been persuaded only Ijy the appeals 
of his friends — chiefly Garrison. Taking their 
advice, he had united with the persecuted and 
obscure band of abolitionists, and to this course he 
attributed all his after success in life. Then, turn- 
ing to the boy, he placed his hand on his head, 
and said in his gentle voice: "My lad, if thou 



46 

wouldst win success, join thyself to some unpopular 
but noble cause. " 

From this time on, for thirty }'ears, Whittier 
continued to be a very poor man. He made anti- 
slavery speeches sometimes, edited antislavery 
papers, wrote antislavery poems, was secretary of 
antislavery societies. For all this he was paid 
very little, and at the same time his health was 
poor. He sold the farm which had been his 
father's, and moved to Amesbury, where he lived 
for the remainder of his life. 

His mother and his sister approved of his course, 
and supported him in every way. Their enthusi- 
astic help made his life even pleasant. He thought 
nothing of poverty or hardship, but only of the 
great work into which he had thrown himself. At 
one time he thought he must mortgage his home; 
but a friend came to his assistance, and at last in 
his old age he had money and comfort and all 
that success brings with it. 

From this time on, Whittier went through times of 
terrible struggle and conflict. Garrison had started 
his well-known paper, the Libcratoi\m Boston. To 



47 

it Whittier contributed the poem from which we 
have quoted the verse on page 44. In 1835 he was 
elected to the legislature by his fellow townsmen of 
Haverhill. 

While attending a special session of the legisla- 
ture that year, he saw the mob which came near 
hanging Garrison, and saw the rope about his 
friend's neck as the crowd hurried him around the 
corner of a street. The riot started in an attempt 
to break up a meeting of the Female Antislavery 
Society, which Whittier's sister was attending. 
When he heard of the outbreak he hurried off to 
the rescue of his sister; but she and the other 
women had escaped; and the police finally saved 
Garrison and took him to the jail for protection. 



CHAPTER X 



IIOW^ WHITTIER WAS IVIOBBED 

We must now mention a few exciting events in 
which Whittier himself took part. At the time 
of the occurrences referred to in the last chapter, 
George Thompson, an eloquent English reformer 



48 

who had helped to secure the abohtion of slavery 
in the British colonies, came to Boston to speak 
against slavery in the United States. It hap- 
pened that the good people of the churches 
thought that the easy way to remove slavery was 
to send the slaves back to Africa, and for this they 
took up collections. Garrison and Whittier came 
out strongly against this weak-kneed plan, and 
George Thompson helped them. Of course, the 
church folk were angry; and all the business men 
were angry, because they said it spoiled business 
to stir up this agitation. As a result, the rough 
characters in every town saw a chance to have 
sport, and did all they could to break up the 
meetings of abolitionists. The good church peo- 
ple and all the well-to-do and solid members of 
the community were so angry that they wouldn't 
do anything to stop the mobs; and the result was 
that, wherever the speakers went, stones and rotten 
eggs were thrown at them, and abuse of all sorts 
was heaped upon them. 

They got up a cry against George Thompson 
especially, that he was an Englishman who had 



49 

come over to try to steal American business; for 
in those days Americans were very jealous of 
England. They said Thompson's antislavery 
speeches were intended simply to stir up a quar- 
rel between the Northern people and the South- 
ern, so that England could step in and get their 
business. Handbills were thrown broadcast in 
Boston offering one hundred dollars to the first 
person that would lay violent hands on him. 

The first mob was the one Whittier saw in 
Boston, from which his sister narrowly escaped. 
The rioters were after Thompson; but not find- 
ing him, they took Garrison instead. 

A little later Thompson came to Haverhill and 
stopped with the Whittiers. He and the poet 
immediately set out on a tour into New Hamp- 
shire. With Thompson had come a clergyman 
named Samuel J. May. He was to have held 
a meeting one Sunday in the First Parish 
meeting-house in Concord, but the committee 
refused to allow him to speak on slavery, and 
another church was obtained. 

At half-past seven he began to speak. Every 



50 

one was listening with breathless attention, when 
a stone came through a window. He paid no 
attention, but kept steadily on. In a moment 
another stone came through the pulpit window, 
and another big one fell among the audience and 
frightened them so they all started for the door. 
Rev. Mr. May then decided to close the meet- 
ing, and called to the people to receive the bene- 
diction. 

It was a good thing he did so, for the steps 
of the church had been taken away, and if the 
crowd had poured out they would have fallen 
headlong. A heavily loaded cannon had also 
been brought up, and would have been used with 
terrible effect had the meeting lasted much longer. 
Whittier's sister took one arm of the clergyman, 
and another young lady the other, and they got 
him through the crowd without injury. 

Whittier and Thompson had in the meantime 
gone to meet a still more violent mob. A man 
named George Kent arranged a meeting for them 
in Concord, Massachusetts, since famous as the 
home of Hawthorne and Emerson. Handbills 



51 

were circulated announcing that George Thomp- 
son and John G. Whittier would hold a meeting 
"at which the principles, views, and operations 
of the abolitionists would be explained." The 
selectmen warned the people who were promoting 
it that there would be trouble if they held it; but 
they persisted. 

As the hour for the meeting approached, a 
great crowd gathered. The selectmen ordered 
that the doors should not be opened. Thereupon 
the crowd determined that they would find "the 
incendiary George Thompson," and punish him 
as he deserved; and, with loud threats, they ac- 
cordingly set ofi" for the house of George Kent and 
his ' ' wine cellar. " 

On the way they met Whittier. They thought 
he was Thompson, in spite of his Quaker coat 
and the assurances of a gentleman who was with 
him that he was not the man, and began to 
pelt him with rotten eggs, mud, and stones. 
Whittier was only lamed a little; but his coat was 
spoiled by the decayed eggs so that he could not 
wear it any more. Years afterward, when clothes 



52 

were being sent to the negroes in the South, he 
donated this coat. 

At hist Whittier and his companion escaped 
into the house of Colonel Kent, a brother of 
George Kent, and the colonel convinced the crowd 
that Thompson was not there. They therefore 
pushed on to the house of George Kent, where 
he really was. Quite a little company of anti- 
slavery people had assembled there to see 
Thompson, among them two nieces of Daniel 
Webster. But when the crowd arrived, he had 
left the house by a back street. 

When the mob found that he was gone, they 
went away to celebrate with fireworks and bon- 
fires. In the meantime Whittier, anxious for his 
friend, changed his hat, and escaping through 
the crowd went to the house of George Kent. 
After a time Thompson came back. So did the 
crowd, all the time firing guns, throwing stones, 
and making a great noise. 

At last, early in the morning, a horse and 
buggy were brought around to the back door, 
and Thompson and Whittier got into the vehicle. 



53 

Then the gates were thrown open, and, before 
the crowd knew what was being done, they drove 
away at a furious rate and escaped. 

They drove fast; but the news had spread be- 
fore them. They came to an inn at some dis- 
tance from Concord. A number of men were 
telhng about the riot, and exhibiting a handbill 
calling upon all good citizens to assist in captur- 
ing George Thompson and giving him his deserts. 

"How will you recognize the rascal? " asked 
Whittier. 

"Easily enough; he is a tonguey fellow," said 
the landlord. 

When they were in their carriage ready to 
drive away, Whittier said, "I am John G. Whittier, 
and this is George Thompson." 

The men stared at them until they were out 
of sight, but did not offer to lay hands on them. 

A year or two later Whittier went to Philadel- 
phia to edit an antislavery paper. The aboli- 
tionists had put up a large, fine building, called Penn- 
sylvania Hall. Whittier moved his editorial office 
into it as soon as it was finished. A series of 



54 

meetings were at once held in it; but they did not 
last long, for one night a mob burned the build- 
ing, and of course Whittier's office, with all his 
papers, was destroyed. 



CHAPTER XI 



SOME OF WIIITTIER S FAMOUS POEMS 

It is not necessary to tell all the events of those 
years of struggle and hardship and poverty. 
Whittier wrote a great many poems on slavery. A 
volume containing one hundred of them was pub- 
lished without his knowledge in 1837 by Isaac 
Knapp, publisher of the Liberator in Boston. It 
was entitled ' ' Poems Written during the Progress 
of the Abolition Question in the United States, 
between the years 1830 and 1838. By John G. 
Whittier." He was in New York when it 
came out. It was the first edition of his poems 
ever published. The next year he edited a volume 
of antislavery poems entitled ' ' The North Star, " 
only a few of which he contributed. In 1839 the 



55 

financial a^ent of the antislavery society, Joseph 
Healy, pubhshed a volume of poems by Whittier, 
There were i8o pages in the book, half of which 
was devoted to poems on slavery, the remainder to 
miscellaneous poems. 

So the years passed by, and Whittier and his 
friends kept up the great fight against slavery. 
The poet wrote hundreds of pieces, poetry and 
prose, which were published in all sorts of papers 
all over the country. Now he was at Haverhill 
in politics, always working for the cause of the 
slave, now in Philadelphia or somewhere else 
editing a paper; and again at his home in Ames- 
bury recovering his health. 

In the meantime the great cause to which he 
devoted himself moved steadily on until the Civil 
War came and all the negroes were set free. 
Whittier did not believe in war; but when it 
came he urged the Quakers, who were opposed 
to fighting, to become nurses, like the nuns and 
sisters of the Catholic church, and minister to 
the sick and wounded. 

In 1857 the Atlantic MontJily was started in 



56 

Boston. All the great writers of the day were to 
have a hand in it — Longfellow, Lowell, Emer- 
son, Holmes, and others. Whittier was also 
invited to take part, and an edition of his col- 
lected poems was published. The Atlantic 
MontJily paid more for contributions than most 
other periodicals in those days. Whittier got fifty 
dollars for each poem, and had a poem published 
nearly every month. He was in very delicate health 
at this time, and was so poor that this small 
amount was a godsend to him. He did not 
attend the monthly dinners in Boston, to which 
all the other literary men went, for he was a 
Quaker and did not approve of wine and luxuries; 
and besides he was not well enough to go. He 
sent his poems, however, with modest little notes, 
asking Lowell if he thought they would do, and 
telling him not to hesitate in rejecting them if he 
thought them silly. He seemed always to be 
afraid lest his beautiful simple poems would be 
so simple that some people would consider them 
foolish. 

In 1858 his mother died, and now he lived 



57 

alone with his sister. She, too, died in 1864, the 
last year of the war, and the next year he wrote 
"Snow-Bound" as a sort of tribute to her memory. 
It was published in Boston in 1866 and at once 
proved very popular. Whittier made $10,000 out 
of the royalties on it. His great regret was that 
his mother and sister had not lived to enjoy the 
benefit of his good fortune. 

Two famous poems deserve mention. One is 
' ' Barbara Frietchie. " A lady friend of Whittier 
heard the story in Washington, and at once said, 
"That is a beautiful subject for a ballad by 
Whittier. It is almost like a scrap of paper lying 
around with his signature on it." So she wrote it 
out and sent it to him. Not long after that he 
wTote the poem, following the original story almost 
exactly. Some people afterward declared that it 
was not true; but there was certainly an old Ger- 
man woman who kept the Union flag waving over 
the rebel troops. 

The other poem is "The Barefoot Boy." Whit- 
tier wrote it in memory of his own boyhood. ' 'For, " 
says he, "I was once a barefoot boy." It pleased 



58 

him very much, and he sent it up to Mr. Fields, 
who was then editing the Atlantic, and asked ' ' if 
he thought it would do." Mr. Fields thought it 
very fine, and said it must go into the edition of 
Whittier's works which he was then publishing. 

Whittier was now sixty years old. The struggles 
of war and politics were over. The dear ones he 
loved were dead. To amuse and relieve himself 
he wrote those simple, beautiful ballads, which every 
person has read and admired. They were among 
the finest things he ever did. Among them were 
"Maud Muller, " "Skipper Ireson's Ride," and 
others equally familiar. They were cheerful and 
happy, and some were about the days of his child- 
hood. There was occasionally a tinge of sadness 
in them, but sadness mingled with hope. 

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, 

The saddest are these: "It might have been!" 

Ah, well ! for us all some sweet hope lies 
Deeply buried from human eyes; 

And, in the hereafter, angels may 
Roll the stone from its grave away! 



59 

Whittier's life viigJit have been much easier and 
much happier. But he had helped much in the 
accomplishment of a great work, and he was not 
one to regret all his hardships and sufferings. 



CHAPTER XII 



THE END OF A SUCCESSFLIL LIFE 

Before closing this short biography we must 
refer briefly to one or two interesting anecdotes 
and circumstances. Whittier was color-blind, at 
least as to red and green. He could see no differ- 
ence between the color of ripe strawberries and the 
leaves of the vine. Yellow he thought the finest 
color in the world, and perhaps for this reason he 
preferred the golden-rod. 

When the Peace Jubilee was to be celebrated 
after the Civil War, Patrick S. Gil more, the 
famous bandmaster, asked Whittier to write an 
ode for the occasion. He declined, and then Gil- 
more offered a prize to the poet who would con- 



6o 

tribute the best one. Whittier thought he would 
write one and send it anonymously. No notice 
was taken of it. Some people will point a moral 
to this tale by saying, "See what a reputation 



IS! 



I " 



Whittier was very fond of pets. Once he had a 
gray parrot. It was trained on shipboard and 
would swear occasionally; but it soon fell into the 
quiet ways of its home. One Sunday morning, 
however, it got on top of the chimney while the 
church bells were ringing, and began to dance and 
scream and swear, while the poor Quakers inside the 
house came out and looked helplessly up at him, 
wondering how they would get him down. After 
that he fell down the chimney and remained in 
the soot two days. When he was discovered and 
taken out he was nearly starved, and died not long 
after. 

Whittier also had a little bantam rooster which 
he trained to crow when he placed it at the door of 
his niece's room in the morning. Every morning 
Whittier would push open her door and put the 
rooster on top of it; and the little fowl would 



6i 

crow lustily until his young mistress was quite 
awake. 

One day not long after the war the Whittiers 
received a small box, and on opening it they were 
astonished to see little spikes sticking out all over. 
Whittier's niece at once guessed it must be an 
infernal machine, and took it out and buried 
it in the garden. A few days after there came a 
letter saying a paperweight, made out of the bullets 
from a famous battlefield, had been sent. Then 
they knew it must be the thing they thought an 
infernal machine, and went and dug it up; and 
after that it always stood on the poet's desk. 

During the time of the war, Gail Hamilton, a 
friend of Whittier's, embroidered a pair of slippers 
for him. They were in Quaker gray, but on them 
was pictured a fierce eagle, with a bunch of thun- 
derbolts in one claw. He was looking knowingly 
around, as much as to say that if he got a good 
chance when nobody was looking, he would hurl 
those thunderbolts. This was intended as a joke 
on W'hittier, who was a Quaker and opposed to 
war, but still had a good deal of the warlike spirit 



62 

in him ready to break out at any moment. Whit- 
tier used to say, referring to the sHppers, that Gail 
Hamilton was as sharp with her needle as with her 
tongue. 

On the occasion of his seventieth birthday, 
Whittier was given a great dinner at the Hotel 
Brunswick in Boston. Nearly all the famous 
writers of the day were present. When it came 
the poet's turn to respond to the address of con- 
gratulation, he said Longfellow would read a short 
poem he had written. He handed a paper to that 
poet, who read the response. 

After that, his birthdays were celebrated more or 
less regularly, and often Whittier had to make 
great efforts to escape the ' 'pilgrims" who came to 
Amesbury to see him. Once a party of boys from 
Exeter Academy started over to visit him and get 
his autograph. By accident they were delayed, 
and when they reached his house it was the dead 
of night and the poet was in bed. He got up, how- 
ever, and gave them hospitality, writing in all their 
books. Before he had finished, one of the boys 
said, "You have written only John in my book." 



6.3 

"I am afraid some of you haven't even got as 
much as that, " said he drily, and took up the 
candle and went off to bed. 

He died on the 7th of September, 1892, at the 
house of some friends in New Hampshire, with 
whom he was staying. 

We cannot close this account of the life of the 
dearest and sweetest of poets better than by quot- 
ing; his own words about himself: 



^t> 



And while my words are read, 
Let this at least be said: 
"Whate'er his life's defeatures, 
He loved his fellow-creatures. 



"To all who humbly suffered, 
His tongue and end he offered; 
His life was not his own, 
Nor lived for self alone. 

"Hater of din and riot, 
He lived in days unquiet; 
And, lover of all beauty. 
Trod the hard ways of duty. 



64 

"He meant no wrong to any, 
He so Light the good of many, 
Yet knew both sin and folly, — 
May God forgive him wholly!" 

Also these lines from "My Soul and I": 

I have wrestled stoutly with the wrong. 

And borne the right 
From beneath the footfall of the throng 

To life and light. 

Wherever Freedom shivered a chain, 

God speed, quoth I ; 
To Error amidst her shouting train 

I trave the lie. 



Note. — The thanks of the piiblisher<; are due Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 
for their kind permission to use selections from the copyrighted works of Whittier. 



"four Great 



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57 4 .<« ; 



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